Mark J.'s Reviews

It should be noted, first, that while David Moody's Autumn quartet has become a self-publishing success story (including netting Moody a publishing contract with St. Martin's, who are slowly re-releasing all his stuff) and singlehandedly sparked an explosion in small-press zombie literature, the books themselves aren't all that great. Autumn is the story of a small group of survivors who are left behind by some sort of fast-acting plague that wipes out billions of people in the space of a few heartbeats. While the novel focuses on one band that gets together in a school building and then splits off into different groups, the movie, after paying token lip service to the school bit (five minutes or thereabouts, it's a much larger portion of the book), focuses on one splinter group from the original mass: Michael (Kick-Ass' Dexter Fletcher), Emma (Lana Kamenov in her first screen appearance), and Carl (British TV character actor Dickon Tolson; American audiences may remember him from a recurring role on the sitcom Growing Pains). There's tension in the group, as there was in the larger group, and it gets worse when the billions of corpses struck down by the disease get up and start walking around...

Review Date: 4/2/2011

A GI in Vietnam saves his buddy's life, but in the process is shot in the head. The injury results in brain damage to the point where he basically has a child's brain in a (very large) man's body. When they get out of the army the two open up a bar together, but some local gangsters make things tough for them after they refuse to take part in brutal "cage" matches where fighters battle to the point of serious injury and/or death.
stars lou ferrigno and Reb brown
Review Date: 11/20/2012

Gangs, Inc-As a young lass, beautiful Joan Woodbury (as Rita Adams) was orphaned, after her "stool pigeon" father was shot to death. As a young woman, Ms. Woodbury finds herself struggling to keep a job, as her murdered father's ex-convict status makes Woodbury a bad business risk. Woodbury rooms with understanding songstress Linda Ware (as Donna Andrews), who advises Woodbury to get in touch with old orphanage friends John Archer (as Bob Elliott) and Jack La Rue (as Mickey Roman). But, none of her friends can help when Woodbury is the victim of a scam, which lands her in prison. Upon release, Woodbury decides to give the male mobsters a run for their money…


they made me a criminal - Johnnie( John Garfield) is a boxer. The same evening he won the world championship, he is charged for the murder of a reporter and is taken for dead. Running away from New York, he ends up in a ranch in Arizona, run by an old lady as a work farm for delinquent teenagers. He falls in love with Peggy and became the teenagers' hero. But there is that New York Detective, Phelan, that does not believe he is dead and is chasing him... An unlikely scenario, but not a so bad film.
Review Date: 11/20/2012

Four films from the name in entertainment that families trust: Hallmark. Featuring dramas The Colt, Thicker Than Water, Fielder's Choice, and Ordinary Miracles. Starring Ryan Merriman, Steve Bacic, Jaclyn Smith, Lyndsy Fonseca, Meredith Baxter, Chad Lowe.
Review Date: 10/25/2013

In Marseilles, the discredited and alcoholic Detective Schneider hijacks a bus and forces the bus driver with a gun to drive him home. He is arrested by the swat force and his washed up career in the police department practically ends. Schneider is removed from the investigation of a serial-killer that is committing hideous crimes against women and assigned to a bureaucratic work in the night-shift in the precinct. Through glimpses from his recollections, Schneider recalls the tragic accident that killed his daughter and left his wife attached to a life support system. Meanwhile, the sick criminal Charles Subra, who killed the parents of two girls many years ago, convinces the probation committee in the prison that he has found God and is regenerated and may be released. Justine, one of the daughters that survived, has never overcome the trauma of her loss and is worried with the possibility of the freedom of the criminal. When Schneider discovers the identity of the serial-killer, he finds also the corruption in the high command of the police, and he decides to go to his last mission on Earth in his descent to Hell
Review Date: 5/1/2011

The Muppets take Manhattan-FS/WS
Muppets from space-FS
Kermit's swamp Years-FS/WS
Review Date: 5/29/2012

Some pundits called it a flawed, exploitative action film that glamorized drug dealing and the luxury of a lucrative criminal lifestyle, spawning a trend of films that attracted youth gangs and provoked violence in theaters. Others hailed it as a breakthrough movie that depicted drug dealers as ruthless, corrupt, and evil, leading dead-end lives that no rational youth would want to emulate. However you interpret it, New Jack City is still one of the first and best films of the 1990s to crack open the underworld of cocaine and peer inside with its eyes wide open. It's also the film that established Wesley Snipes as an actor to watch, with enough charisma to bring an insidious quality of seduction to his role as coke-lord Nino Brown, and enough intelligence to portray a character deluded by his own sense of indestructible power. Director Mario Van Peebles stretched his otherwise-limited talent to bring vivid authenticity and urgency to this crime story, and subplots involving a pair of tenacious cops (Ice-T, Judd Nelson) and a recovering coke addict (Chris Rock) provide additional dramatic tension
Review Date: 11/20/2012

The story could have been written by Stephen King: Psychologically down because of the emotional stress of his job ex-investigator and bestseller author James MacGregor (Charles Sheen) moves from America to the Scottish Highlands. But instead getting some peace to sort out his life he becomes the target of an serial killer who sends him faxes to announce upcoming murders. A dead girl found in his garden makes him the local police's No.1 suspect. This means back to work for MacGregor to find the true killer
Review Date: 11/20/2012

An eccentric rich kid plans a high school reunion in the form of a funeral that's set to take place in an abandoned witches' prison. While holding a seance using a Ouija board, the former classmates unleash three executioners from their graves. Now they have to figure out how to stop the undead ghouls! Patrick Flood and Debra Mayer star. 90 min.

Review Date: 6/10/2013

Kiefer Sutherland sporting a kilt and a laughable Irish accent and beautiful scenery gorgeously photographed are but two of the attractions in River Queen, a 2005 film that earned considerable acclaim in New Zealand, where it was produced, but was never released theatrically in the United States. Set in the 1860s, writer-director Vincent Ward’s tale stars Samantha Morton as Sarah O’Brien, a young Englishwoman who travels with her father (a cameo by Stephen Rea) to New Zealand, where the nasty imperialists are stealing the land and trampling the culture of the indigenous Maori. A brief and dangerous liaison with a young native (who soon dies) leaves her with a child known only as "Boy." When the six-year-old’s Maori grandfather kidnaps him, Sarah embarks on a seven-year odyssey to find him, a search that finally ends when a warrior named Wiremu (Cliff Curtis) offers to take her to him if she will use her healing powers to cure the Maori chief of his "coughing sickness." And so it goes, with Sarah discovering that her son is torn between his two heritages while she herself is attracted to both Wiremu and the soldier (Sutherland) who defends her--all while the Maori "rebels" and their colonial oppressors are battling it out in the woods and along the rivers of this untamed wilderness.
Review Date: 3/31/2011

When a plane carrying a pair of top secret military robots crashes on a deserted Pacific island, a team of Navy SEALS must go in, find them, and try to "turn them off." But that's not so easy! The Shock Wave robots were originally built as the next generation of Mars Rovers, but were so successfully designed that they were quickly reengineered to replace the Army's infantry as the first wave of attack when trying to control hostile territories and root out terrorists wherever they may be. An armor-plated walking arsenal, each unit is equipped with sophisticated lasers, guidance and weapons systems, advanced locomotion and terrain maneuverability, and state-of-the-art artificial intelligence technology. The longer they're on, the smarter they get. Now it's up to the specially selected Navy SEAL unit armed with the latest military prototype particle canons specifically designed to destroy band-wired robots to contain the threat and salvage any of the technology that they can. But the robots have grown too smart, and they've figured out how to dismantle the guns, leaving our team helpless against this mechanical onslaught. With time quickly running out, this team must figure out how to outwit and deactivate the machines before they become the new dominant species on Earth.
Review Date: 4/2/2011

It’s the fall of 1969, and winds of change are blowing across America. But on a remote family farm in the hills of Virginia, a storm of evil has been brewing for years. Now for a group of young people hitchhiking to a rally in Washington DC, a detour to the nightmare homestead of the Staunton’s will rip apart their young lives forever. A grisly secret is waiting. The raw terror is growing. And the clan’s brutal harvest is about to begin. Kathy Lamkin (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), Kiko Ellsworth (“Dexter”), Cooper Huckabee (The Funhouse), Cristen Coppen and David Rountree star in this extreme shocker from Pittsburgh filmmaker Cameron Romero – son of legendary Night Of The Living Dead director George A. Romero – that unleashes a new generation of graphic horror.
Review Date: 11/20/2012

Gary Busey, Billy Dee Williams. The U.S. Navy's top Seal team gets captured during a rescue mission of a bio-chemical weapons expert who had been kidnapped by enemy agents. The team is trapped a mile underwater and now must use all their skills and ingenuity to escape
Review Date: 11/20/2012

This was a made for tv movie back in the 70's and one of the first to deal with the topic of compulsive gambling. Back then it was widely believed that only men developed this addiction, so this movie was quite a breakthrough that portrayed a woman with this problem. Shirley Jones gives a wonderful performance as a happily married woman in love with her husband, enchanted with her stepdaughter, the portrait of a perfect wife and mother with a secret life. She handles the finances in the family and gambles away her husband's life savings. When he decides to use that money to buy a business, she is desperate to find a way to win it back before he discovers her secret and her life completely unravels. Lawrence Luckinbill plays her husband and Sylvia Sidney has a small supporting role as her not so understanding mother. Any woman who has ever grappled with this addiction will understand her motivations and feel her pain and panic. Much of the movie feels dated now, but the performances are first rate. And the topic is even more relevant now than it was back in 1975.

Review Date: 11/19/2013

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